Does Hospice at home designate a family member to administrate morphine to mom or dad while under hospice care?

My mother was given morphine when dying by a ‘morphine driver’, an external bag with a tube that fed every few minutes into a canula in her arm. It didn’t need anyone to ‘administer’ it, it happened automatically. I had an abdominal hysterectomy myself a few months later, and the first night I also had morphine via the same canula system.

Interestingly, I spent a night a short time later in a boat that had a solar pump which regularly pumped water out of the leaky bilge. It sounded exactly like the morphine driver, and gave me the horrors!

No one has to be trained.I gave the meds to my dad. The thing to remember is the person is dying, so you aren't going to kill them by accident with morphine. They don't give you enough in a comfort pack to do that.

What I wish I knew then was to give my dad a few drops at a time instead of a dose -- wait four hours -- then another dose. When he was near to dying on his last day, the hospice nurse was there full-time, and she gave him a drop or two, then 15 minutes later another drop or two, and so on, which kept the level in his bloodstream consistent. He was never in any real pain anyway, but he was comfortable and that was so important to us.

It's my experience that hospice doesn't really care who gives the patient morphine, as long as they get it, if needed. When my husband was on morphine, it was me that gave it to him as I was with him 24/7. Towards the end of his life, it again was me that had to get up every 4 hours to give him his haldol and lorazepam, through his picc line, and I was also the one to continually push his fentanyl button from his pain pump.
If you have several family members involved in this family members care, than it's probably a good idea to keep a chart of when the morphine was given and how much. The most important thing is to keep them comfortable. Best wishes.

I'm wondering about the fact that morphine is a controlled substance.   I haven't done much research, but I would think that a narcotic under the Controlled Substances Act would have to be administered by someone also qualified under the act to do so.

Worried, I'll bet you have some insight on this issue?

It all depends on what the family/patient wants. With my MIL, no one was designated. Her partner was her caregiver but the “comfort pack” was in the refrigerator and whoever was there would give her Ativan when she requested it. There wasn’t a designated person, in fact her caregiver refused to give her morphine until her last 4 days and only agreed to it because he is a control freak master manipulator who didn’t want her children staying at the house in shifts in order to give her the morphine after hospice said she needed it.

We created a chart for my sister. That way everyone involved with her care knew what meds and when they had been administered.

Hospice only gave us the information about how to administer the medication, not anything about who.

Every caregiver should have the ability to administer the medication, I think keeping a written record stops under or overdosing. The patient is being kept pain free and that is what should be the focus when deciding how and who should handle the meds.

I would think its better for one person to be the one administering the meds if there 24/7. But if doing the caring in shifts, then each shift should know how to administer meds. Like Alva said, ask the Hospice Nurse.

That is a good question. Hospices do act as individual business entities, and each may differ a bit in how things are handled. Often medications such as morphine are given sublinqual; they are liquid. And there are full instructions from each agency to the person who will be administering the medication. If there is reason to worry, reason that medications be given in very small amounts and reasons that certain persons should not have access to medications then this is something that family should discuss with Hospice. Truly, they are open to any and all questions and there are no stories that they have no heard more than a few times already.